He has been honored for his advancements in the field of computational material science.

“Up to now, most of the materials that we have been developing are based on trial and error,” Romero said. We just go into the laboratory with a vague intuition, and you try to develop a material based on that intuition.”

“I think that’s changing thanks to this synergy between theory and experiment. You can develop materials jointly by doing computation. You can try on the computers thousands of materials in very few weeks. Then you can select a few of them and let the experiments to work only in the most important ones. This synergy is going to be important for the future.”

In order to be considered applicants must be nominated by a peer in the same field, provide letters of recommendation from current society fellows and provide detailed lists of academic responsibilities, former projects and assignments.

Romero was recently awarded a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation for his research expanding the magnetic capabilities of materials in electronic devices along the materials genome initiative.

“To scratch the knowledge of nature, just to see what is around you and why things act as they do is very exciting,” he said. “Why do some materials have very specific and exotic properties and others don’t?

“To see what you can learn and how you can play (with these materials) I think is very exciting. I feel like a kid. Playing with your imagination is so fun. You can explore your mind without boundaries.”